NORTH DAKOTA ( KXNET ) — Everyone has probably heard the age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s the question adults love asking kids as they figure out what they want to do in life. It’s a question that’s hard to answer and one that oftentimes doesn’t reflect what the kid actually ends up doing.

Often, the job kids dream of in their youth is grandiose, such as being a doctor, firefighter, or astronaut. Many set unrealistic expectations for themselves, and most wind up changing their goals as they grow older. A large amount of the time, people wind up doing certain jobs to make ends meet, even though they don’t necessarily like what they do.

A new survey conducted by CardRates.com , a website that educates people about credit card use, reveals that about 38% of North Dakotans admit they loathe what they do for work.

The survey simply asked the question, “Do you loathe your job?”

CardRates.com asked 3,000 people from around the United States this question and used stratified sampling, a method in which a group of people is analyzed by surveying a sample of them, to try and ensure representativeness. They also used poststratification weighting to try and compensate for the types of people not likely to respond.

Through these methods, they were able to estimate that about 168,000 North Dakotans loathe their jobs.

Nationally, the survey found that about 59 million people despise what they do. Only 14% of people are working at jobs they dreamt about as children and about two-thirds of people regularly consider switching jobs.

The survey states that doctors, teachers, musicians, and athletes are the most common jobs children dream about. It also analyzed the obstacles that got in the way of people pursuing those careers.

About 90% of people who don’t have their dream jobs cited financial limitations, lack of opportunities, or family commitments as the reason they didn’t pursue them. Most abandon their childhood dream jobs around the age of 25.

While many of the jobs kids dream about, such as being an astronaut, might seem unrealistic, and many obstacles can stand in the way of pursuing them, it’s never too late to give your childhood dream a try. As the kids say, you only live once.

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